BayoJeanne Week - Death
by SilaswereWolfie
Summary: Things in her life are fleeting and Jeanne fears the day she will leave the eye of the hurricane once again. Bayonetta worries for her lover and both of them have to ford the painful waters of their history but not all is lost.


"Just for reference, darling, I can hear you think from here."

The low, sleepy mumble made Jeanne look to her right ( to where most of the covers usually resided) and she quirked her eyebrow at her lover. Cereza rubbed at her eyes and felt around the nightstand for her glasses, accidentally dropping them under the bed.

"Fuck on a stick." She grumbled, digging herself out of her dragon hoard of quilts and leaning over her side of the bed.

Jeanne kept silent as Bayonetta, graceful as a drunk ostrich, tried to retrieve her precious glasses. It wasn't going too successfully, judging by the flailing and muted curses coming from her beloved partner.

With a triumphant grunt, she settled back on the bed and continued smoothly. "What has you up quite so late?"

Jeanne laid her arms behind her head and took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm sorry, I was not aware my absolute immobility and silence were quite so disturbing."

Cereza snaked an arm around her naked midsection, which prompted an appreciative flexing of abs, and nuzzled against her clavicle. "But you see, it is because by this hour you're usually your pretzel ballerina sleeping self all over my side."

"It's where the covers are, Cereza" She deadpanned, kissing her short hair to smooth over any ruffled feathers. She had learned to manage but, no matter the covers, they were definitely not on top of her ever.

"Regardless", she waved airily and extended her arm to poke at her shoulder. "You sleep about as well as a cat on caffeine but this is odd even for you."

Her tone turned soft and tender and she looked up at Jeanne's exhausted eyes with gentle worry."Tell me what's wrong"

"I was just…thinking." Bayonetta resisted the urge to sigh with worry but she only managed to divert it to a strong exhale through her nose. She knew as well as she knew herself that _thinking_ with Jeanne always meant trouble, more so if it made her stare at the ceiling for hours on end on a school night.

"What were you spinning around obsessively on that smart head of yours?"

The silence stretched on for several seconds more and Bayonetta was about to lift herself up to look at Jeanne when a calloused hand threaded on her hair with the gentlest of touches, moving talented fingers to massage her scalp softly.

"About death and…about dying and how that throws our unbelievably lucky reunion to shit."

In truth, it was something she always worried about, more or less every hour of every day with varying intensity. She hadn't been counting on making it this long, worse she hadn't been wired to make it so far.

She had been heir to the clan, was technically the Elder now, with no clan or court but one nonetheless. It was part of her core makeup to put the safety of others well before herself and it was the job of the Elder to make sure hers was the least important life.

The Clan, their culture, her sisters had to be protected at all costs and her life was a paltry sum compared to it.

Nothing had changed really, just the object of her priorities. Though, in all fairness she had always prioritised Cereza (perhaps more than she should) because nothing made her angrier than the Umbran injustice and cruelty towards someone who had not had any control of her circumstances.

"I've heard that does tend to happen" she replied in attempt to keep the mood as light as possible, nipping slightly at the hard muscle underneath her cheek which earned her another lingering kiss to her head.

"I was not supposed to be here." Was the blunt follow-up, her tone worryingly truthful and absolutely terrified.

Cereza was at an impasse, caught in a situation so delicate approaching it badly would drive Jeanne further into whatever she was struggling with. Against all of her instincts of protectiveness that demanded she comfort her and stop her from feeling bad, she remained quiet and waited for further explanation.

"I was sure the Clan Wars would be it for me but they weren't, I was sure the hunts would definitely be it for me and then…"

She ground her teeth together in helpless frustration."They weren't! But everything was ruined and you were no longer around and I… I did what I could, which ended in a failure I was sure would kill me."

Bayonetta held her close, Jeanne's heavy breathing rattling against her cheek.

"The world was at it's literal end, reality as we knew it was about to be destroyed and I gave my life as forfeit." She finished, a note of bitterness colouring her voice and echoing into the darkness of the night.

The odds were ever stacked against and still, she had come out the other end alive time and time again. She wasn't counting on it, had no plan for freedom, for life, _for joy?_

Those had been foreign concepts for centuries and now, she was out in the big open pasture and she had no clue what to do.

Cereza listened and pondered on her words carefully. She wanted to intervene on that self destructive rant, wanted to hold her close and kiss her softly and tell her all was alright.

But was that really what she needed?

"What bothers you the most, then…is it that you think you're on borrowed time." She started, taking a leap of faith so valiant her heart hammered on her throat. It felt like reasoning with a spooked fawn, any odd movement would send her bolting into the wilderness" Or that you have no clue what to do with relative stability?"

The hand on her hair massaged her scalp with increasingly more absent-minded movements till it stilled to a slow scratch.

Another long sigh that displaced her head still laying on her chest. "I keep waiting for the hammer to fall for the last time. I feel I've ran out of luck and opportunities, that all my good fortune was spent up just coming back from all of that."

And now that she had Cereza, a home, a life that was her own. How long till that was snatched away from her? "I love you, so much… being here, _now_ is absolutely not what I was expecting would happen."

Bayonetta got up from the soft perch on her chest, her heart clenching at those words. There was no mistaking the utter sincerity of them and it skyrocketed her worries right into the redline.

"But I'm here and darling, let me inform you, you're definitely stuck with me now." She countered, running the back of her hand on her jaw with utmost tenderness. "You haven't used up all the good things in life to stay alive, if anything you have earned them in triplicate."

Jeanne furrowed her brows at her words, the notion sitting with an uncomfortable drop on her chest.

"You've been through so much, sacrificed everything for all of us, for me in particular. You get to reap those rewards." She leaned in for a soft kiss, parting slightly to look into the stormy grey eyes of her somewhat decidedly better half. "I love you too and I'll be here to remind you you gave so much, now you get to receive."

Her words were gentle and uplifting but she couldn't help thinking that all of the good things in her life were inevitably snatched away. Her life had a long track record of doing that but underneath it all, that notion started feeling less uncomfortable.

Receiving for once seemed like a positive thing to look forward to.

"As for not knowing what to do with yourself without purpose, take it from someone who has spent two decades adrift at sea" She twirled her index in the air, an old sign of theirs for Jeanne to lay down on her stomach. "The world is your oyster and you get to choose how you want to go about it."

Jeanne did as she asked with a modicum of hesitancy, probably thinking the more good things she had the closer she was to having it all stripped away again. She swiftly straddled her narrow hips and bent down to kiss her shoulders, not leaving any space for her to change her mind. "Do what you want to do and you're always going to be doing there right thing, love."

Could it really be that simple? Exhaustion was minutes away from steamrolling her into a puddle of mush and Cereza's heavenly, unfairly talented hands were making quick work of the tension on her back.

She managed a somewhat whiny but half way coherent agreement and Bayonetta chuckled, leaning down fully over her strong back to whisper in her ear. "You're the best thing in this Trinity of Realities, darling, and I want you by my side for the duration, ok?"

Jeanne finally relented and nodded, twisting around to yank her lover down for a long hard kiss. "Ok, I think I can try that."

Life wasn't perfect, far from it, nor was this issue so neatly resolved as it would on a feel-good sitcom.

But

It was a start.


End file.
